The original Boston Tea Party took place in an environment where the nation's founders had published a great deal of information (you seem under the impression that they were vague about the issues)
No no, far from it. I'm aware that the press was important to the nations founders. What I was pointing out is that with the media today, any message longer than a tweet gets distorted or outright ignored. Perhaps OWS made some PR missteps, but they did have a message that was comparable to the message of the boston tea party. There are several important differences of course, but I'm saying one of them was that the media in that day had an attention span that it does not today. Thus, the boston tea party's message was recieved, while OWS's was not (at least in part).
They did NOT destroy the tea after innocent shopkeepers bought it and brought it into their shops. They did not rampage through the streets smashing windows and burning shops and, oh just by accident stuffing their pockets with merchandise... and the biggest difference is that they were in a revolutionary struggle to throw-off a government that taxed them without allowing them fair representation. There are no pictures or accounts of Tea Partiers pooping on police horses...
You're suggesting that the revolutionaries were all perfectly behaved? My opinion is that you hear less about misbehavior from the revolutionaries largely because they didn't have camera phones back then, and also that those who win write history as they see fit. I'm sure if you found a paper with a Tory bias, they'd highlight misbehavior as bad as you see with the OWS.
Moreover, you shouldn't judge a movement by the actions of a few. Remember that many of our founding fathers were slave owners. I'd much rather our country had been born of men who pooped all over police horses than slave owners. But it wasn't, and the fact that our country was founded by slave owners doesn't mean the whole thing was rotten.
Are the "occupy Wall Street" groups trying to throw-off the US government because it unfairly taxes them while not allowing them to vote for representation? To me, they mostly looked like freeloaders looking to get representation without taxation (for themselves) and taxation without representation (for corporations and everybody else).... the opposite of our founders. Oh, and the photo of the "occupier" pooping on a cop car is the perfect symbol of the "movement"...
How about you read some of the press statements they've made about their intentions? It sounds to me like you've only listened to pundits whining about how gross these hippies are. You have the internet, google "Are the "occupy Wall Street" groups trying to throw-off the US government because it unfairly taxes them while not allowing them to vote for representation?" It's quite hypocritical to say I'm oversimplifying the boston tea party and ignoring their statements (which, again, I wasn't doing) while you oversimplify the OWS.
Tech journalists. Which seem to be the second worst journalists out there. Financial sector journalists are pretty shitty at what they do, political reporters are generally pretty terrible at doing anything more than regurgitating press releases. But at least both have some importance and occasionally you get decent reports. Tech journalists, on the other hand, seem to be little more than advertisers. And not even very good ones at that. Aside from gawker buying that iphone prototype, I can't think of a single thing done by anyone who reports on mobile phones or consumer electronics that was worth anything, and even that iphone thing was utterly unimportant. Wait a few fucking months.
Still better than celebrity gossip reporters. I'll give them that much. They may be utterly worthless, but at least they don't distract people from important issues as much as celebrity news does.
Their state economy is not borked like California, they have low tax,
Just to clarify something: if both those things are true, there is likely a third thing that is also true about their economy. Either they must actually control spending, or they must suck down federal dollars or be selling some public good to make up the difference. The former would be quite impressive and indeed Texas would be truly a model. No one seems capable of controlling spending, every politician likes spending wildly in order to buy votes. Voters like it when "their guy" spends other people's taxes on them, thus it's a race to grab the most tax dollars. Those pols that don't are at a huge disadvantage.
The latter would be far worse than California if true. I don't know much about texas' economics specifically.
Indeed. Every time I hear about US voters allowing some idiotic thing to happen, I calm down a bit when I realize it could be worse. We only elected W once. The Italians elected Berlusconi numerous times. Voters here may be confused by this whole "climate change" thing, but at least we aren't blaming the scientists for causing it (yet.) We let lobbyists for industries buy votes, but at least they need to jump through more hoops than they do in Italy. Well, except for Illinois.
Somehow, knowing that we don't have the worst voters in the world makes me optimistic that we can do better.
The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protesters were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies, remained prominent. Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights... Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business. Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act. Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods
It reminds me of occupy wall street. They were upset at more than one thing. Fortunately, the media in those days catered to people who had an attention span longer than ten words.
"Good guy" and "bad guy" status is not as mutually exclusive as you might think. The "idiots that smash store windows during street protests" sometimes organize to do something more productive, things you'd consider to be more "political."
The Boston Tea party: Some hooligans in the US in Boston dressed up as native Americans and dumped the tea cargo into the harbor. That was vandalism. It wasn't to protest just one thing either, there were multiple issues the protesters were upset about. I suspect that were something similar to happen today, Fox would give them the same treatment they gave the occupy wall street movement. "It's vandalism! And what are they even upset ABOUT? They can't even tell us that (at least not in few enough words to fit on a bumper sticker.)"
Anyway, they can be thieves and window smashers and still have valid political motivations. And what they've done is illegal no matter what their motivations.
Perhaps he needs to be able to enter into a contract? Non-disclosure agreement, etc.
I suppose that sounds more logical, but still fails to make any sense. The money is the carrot, the contracts (to not sue or tell everyone about the bugs) would be the stick. They can't use the stick, sure, but they can still give him the carrot. Obviously, you don't NEED a contract to give someone money. That carrot would still encourage the outcome that they'd want, in this situation. By giving him nothing, they're obviously making it a lot more likely he'd blab to everyone what bug he found, and he's probably more likely to sue.
Isn't it odd that every other shelter organisation around has far fewer euthanizations and far more adoptions than PETA's shelters do ?
No. PETA is pretty clearly all about "LOOK AT ME! PAY ATTENTION TO ME! HEY YOU! LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!" Maybe a little bit of "holier than thou" mixed in. That they'd take in animals as fast as possible and kill to make more room is only surprising if you make the mistake of thinking they're actually trying to help animals rather than just get attention.
You present a straw man argument. No one was suggesting they can't pass whatever rules they want. The issue is that the rule is stupid.
Most laws people disagree with, it's not a matter of "you can't pass that law," it's a matter of "You SHOULDN'T pass that law." Sometimes the objections do come in the form of "you can't pass it," but that's usually an excuse. The patriot act, for example. My objection to it isn't really that congress is unable to enact it legally. Were the supreme court to knock it down, I'd take that any day, but I really hate it because it's a stupid, dangerous law that does nothing but take away our rights in exchange for imaginary security. Conversely, people who like the idea of prayer in public schools, their minds aren't changed about it being a good idea by someone saying "But that's unconstitutional! You can't do that!"
I'm assuming there's no legal reason why one would need to be 18 to get paid for something like this? No child labor laws that apply in weird ways to where paypal would be classified as a sweatshop for one time giving money to someone who was 17? Just lawyers upholding the all holy all important important EULA at the expense of what's fair and what's good PR?
I don't like google glass of one reason. I hate advertisers why would I want ads transmitted to me just because I walked by a store?
Oh that isn't a feature of glass yet? just wait it will come right along with the face recognition.
So you hate it for a feature you're not even sure is a feature?
I'm not going to say it's unreasonable to expect that is going to be a thing, but Jesus, this is news for nerds. Can't we find real reasons to hate something without resorting to inventing features that we WILL hate?
It's not limited to long distance rail here either. Local trains in chicago, NY, Washington DC, and pretty much everywhere else are never on time. In Japan? They're like a few seconds late if there's a typhoon and earthquake simultaneously. The Japanese government is a bureaucratic nightmare, and they obviously have gigantic auto manufacturers lobbying the government as well, so I'm skeptical that government interference and/or car manufacturer sabotage contributes.
I think it really must be that the past few generations of Americans have low expectations for trains and public transit, so they don't demand better service from trains. When the subway is late in Tokyo, everyone is upset and demands improvements. When it's late in New York, everyone is upset but says "Ah, it's always late" and they just shoot someone.
Why is it that every time foreign people do something amazing, someone has to question them about the actions of their governments?
Because that's the only thing they can contribute. They don't understand the science, but they do understand geography.
In this case, I'd say it's more a fault of the articles than the reader: I'm a molecular biologist, and I can't figure out from the summary or the blurby article what's going on.
“Our results show a novel, synthetic designed computing machine that computes iteratively and produces biologically relevant results,” says lead researcher Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Technion Schulich Faculty of Chemistry. “In addition to enhanced computation power, this DNA-based transducer offers multiple benefits, including the ability to read and transform genetic information, miniaturization to the molecular scale, and the aptitude to produce computational results that interact directly with living organisms.”
Honestly, aside from "DNA-based" and "read and transform genetic information," that sounds exactly like the computer I'm currently typing on. There are no concrete examples of how this could be useful in any article I'm coming across. There's no video of this thing in action. It's all buzzwords and promises.
The actual article can be found here behind a paywall. The abstract:
As computing devices, which process data and interconvert information, transducers can encode new information and use their output for subsequent computing, offering high computational power that may be equivalent to a universal Turing machine. We report on an experimental DNA-based molecular transducer that computes iteratively and produces biologically relevant outputs. As a proof of concept, the transducer accomplished division of numbers by 3. The iterative power was demonstrated by a recursive application on an obtained output. This device reads plasmids as input and processes the information according to a predetermined algorithm, which is represented by molecular software. The device writes new information on the plasmid using hardware that comprises DNA-manipulating enzymes. The computation produces dual output: a quotient, represented by newly encoded DNA, and a remainder, represented by E. coli phenotypes. This device algorithmically manipulates genetic codes.
So... in other words they made sequences in ecoli which can be used as a calculator. A very, very, VERY slow calculator. This is not a novel concept people have used DNA for computations before. DNA based computers are probably never going to replace electronic ones, I mean fundamentally, DNA is slower than electricity. Even life finds DNA to be too slow for such calculations, which is why your thoughts are conducted via sodium and potassium gradients. The fact that they don't mention any real uses for this means they couldn't think up a good reason why you'd need to do computations with DNA. "aptitude to produce computational results that interact directly with living organisms" bullshit.
So, I'd say that Israel sounds like the most interesting thing here. I now know that the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel has a PR department that works VERY hard to make their results sound interesting.
I will say that the techniques here could have real uses and could be important, just not at all in the ways that are being discussed. It could lead to a useful lab technique, maybe. But making a living computer? I'd sooner believe that North Korea had invented cold fusion.
What? There are plenty of us who don't want zero tolerance. As I said, the schools have taken it and run with it. I'm not a school, if there's any confusion there. That many of the shrill parents and politicians want it isn't the whole story: it's approaching a point where most schools do have some degree of zero tolerance. I've known it was a stupid idea since I was in high school, I've never been an asswipe who demanded it.
Partially, like real roots which sometimes interconnect, but mainly I think the second is individual cowardice, while the first is bureaucratic paranoia.
Serious point: that's a bit simplistic. People do threaten to sue the pants off people for saying things about them that are clearly true, and there may be a reason the holders have not sued yet. For example, perhaps the mayor is waiting until gawker actually buys it and shows it, at which point he can sue gawker for a ton of money in damages rather than suing whoever shot the video for all of the thousand dollars in his bank account. If the person with the video has even been identified.
But the reason no one could have faked the moon landing has to do with the state of video technology in 1969. Essentially, the hoaxers claim the video footage was faked by just slowing down people walking in normal Earth gravity. However according to Collins, the camera required to do that didn’t exist at the time.
Similar reasons for this video you say? I... what?
"Unfortunately, what she did falls into our code of conduct," Leah Lauderdale, a spokeswoman for the district, tells Riptide. "It's grounds for immediate expulsion."
More specifically, Wilmot's mini-explosion -- which came after she mixed "common household chemicals" in a plastic bottle -- violates Section 7.05 of the school's conduct code, Lauderdale says, which mandates expulsion for any "student in possession of a bomb (or) explosive device... while at a school (or) a school-sponsored activity... unless the material or device is being used as part of a legitimate school-related activity or science project conducted under the supervision of an instructor."
...Wilmot's principal acknowledges that the 16-year-old wasn't trying to hurt anyone and simply made a "bad choice," the school's rules said she had to be expelled.
...The spokeswoman says the school district stands by its rules. "We urge our parents to convey to their kids that there are consequences to their actions," she says.
source
They undoubtedly maintained that since a teacher wasn't present at the time, that violated the letter of the law and, obviously, "NO EXCEPTIONS TO RULES EVER" is the most important message schools can teach to kids. (sarcasm)
There's also obviously a bit of "I'm just following orders, it's not me who is doing this clearly stupid and unethical thing even though I am the actual one expelling you."
I think there are two big roots to the problem. The first is zero tolerance policies. Schools love them deep down because it makes fretful parents think their children are safer, and also probably dealing with kids all day makes you really want to clamp down hard with rules for your own sanity. And obviously in this case, the school was more interested in showing that students are not going to be blown up by science-loving terrorist children than they were in the student. Even if the schools didn't want zero tolerance, all the other idiots involved want them, legislators and parents.
The second is personal liability. No one wants to stand up and say "Fuck that rule, it's a stupid fucking rule" and then potentially lose their job. I have no idea how likely that would have been in this case. Evidently, no one even wanted to say "She DID have permission, so she's not really violating the rules." Maybe the teacher who gave her permission chickened out and said "Well, I didn't give her permission to do THAT, so please don't fire me.
TLDR: it would be nice if someone had the power to use their own judgement and intelligence here, but there are plenty of mechanisms in place to ensure that can't happen. Preventing this type of idiotic heavy-handed action will require bigger changes than one administrator growing a brain and/or balls.
You failed to read the rest of the post. 97% of climate change studies support climate change being a real thing. Gun control, you can't honestly claim that anything approaching 97% of the studies conclude gun control is bad and ineffective. There is a consensus on evolution and climate change, there is none on gun control.
Did you fail to read the "As opposed to some other issue where there is much more support for either side" line or has that debate suddenly been settled?
Slashdot Mirror
The original Boston Tea Party took place in an environment where the nation's founders had published a great deal of information (you seem under the impression that they were vague about the issues)
No no, far from it. I'm aware that the press was important to the nations founders. What I was pointing out is that with the media today, any message longer than a tweet gets distorted or outright ignored. Perhaps OWS made some PR missteps, but they did have a message that was comparable to the message of the boston tea party. There are several important differences of course, but I'm saying one of them was that the media in that day had an attention span that it does not today. Thus, the boston tea party's message was recieved, while OWS's was not (at least in part).
They did NOT destroy the tea after innocent shopkeepers bought it and brought it into their shops. They did not rampage through the streets smashing windows and burning shops and, oh just by accident stuffing their pockets with merchandise... and the biggest difference is that they were in a revolutionary struggle to throw-off a government that taxed them without allowing them fair representation. There are no pictures or accounts of Tea Partiers pooping on police horses...
You're suggesting that the revolutionaries were all perfectly behaved? My opinion is that you hear less about misbehavior from the revolutionaries largely because they didn't have camera phones back then, and also that those who win write history as they see fit. I'm sure if you found a paper with a Tory bias, they'd highlight misbehavior as bad as you see with the OWS.
Moreover, you shouldn't judge a movement by the actions of a few. Remember that many of our founding fathers were slave owners. I'd much rather our country had been born of men who pooped all over police horses than slave owners. But it wasn't, and the fact that our country was founded by slave owners doesn't mean the whole thing was rotten.
Are the "occupy Wall Street" groups trying to throw-off the US government because it unfairly taxes them while not allowing them to vote for representation? To me, they mostly looked like freeloaders looking to get representation without taxation (for themselves) and taxation without representation (for corporations and everybody else).... the opposite of our founders. Oh, and the photo of the "occupier" pooping on a cop car is the perfect symbol of the "movement"...
How about you read some of the press statements they've made about their intentions? It sounds to me like you've only listened to pundits whining about how gross these hippies are. You have the internet, google "Are the "occupy Wall Street" groups trying to throw-off the US government because it unfairly taxes them while not allowing them to vote for representation?" It's quite hypocritical to say I'm oversimplifying the boston tea party and ignoring their statements (which, again, I wasn't doing) while you oversimplify the OWS.
Tech journalists. Which seem to be the second worst journalists out there. Financial sector journalists are pretty shitty at what they do, political reporters are generally pretty terrible at doing anything more than regurgitating press releases. But at least both have some importance and occasionally you get decent reports. Tech journalists, on the other hand, seem to be little more than advertisers. And not even very good ones at that. Aside from gawker buying that iphone prototype, I can't think of a single thing done by anyone who reports on mobile phones or consumer electronics that was worth anything, and even that iphone thing was utterly unimportant. Wait a few fucking months.
Still better than celebrity gossip reporters. I'll give them that much. They may be utterly worthless, but at least they don't distract people from important issues as much as celebrity news does.
Their state economy is not borked like California, they have low tax,
Just to clarify something: if both those things are true, there is likely a third thing that is also true about their economy. Either they must actually control spending, or they must suck down federal dollars or be selling some public good to make up the difference. The former would be quite impressive and indeed Texas would be truly a model. No one seems capable of controlling spending, every politician likes spending wildly in order to buy votes. Voters like it when "their guy" spends other people's taxes on them, thus it's a race to grab the most tax dollars. Those pols that don't are at a huge disadvantage.
The latter would be far worse than California if true. I don't know much about texas' economics specifically.
Indeed. Every time I hear about US voters allowing some idiotic thing to happen, I calm down a bit when I realize it could be worse. We only elected W once. The Italians elected Berlusconi numerous times. Voters here may be confused by this whole "climate change" thing, but at least we aren't blaming the scientists for causing it (yet.) We let lobbyists for industries buy votes, but at least they need to jump through more hoops than they do in Italy. Well, except for Illinois.
Somehow, knowing that we don't have the worst voters in the world makes me optimistic that we can do better.
Read what I wrote: "Except it wasn't just that..."
The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protesters were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies, remained prominent. Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights... Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business. Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act. Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods
It reminds me of occupy wall street. They were upset at more than one thing. Fortunately, the media in those days catered to people who had an attention span longer than ten words.
"Good guy" and "bad guy" status is not as mutually exclusive as you might think. The "idiots that smash store windows during street protests" sometimes organize to do something more productive, things you'd consider to be more "political."
The Boston Tea party: Some hooligans in the US in Boston dressed up as native Americans and dumped the tea cargo into the harbor. That was vandalism. It wasn't to protest just one thing either, there were multiple issues the protesters were upset about. I suspect that were something similar to happen today, Fox would give them the same treatment they gave the occupy wall street movement. "It's vandalism! And what are they even upset ABOUT? They can't even tell us that (at least not in few enough words to fit on a bumper sticker.)"
Anyway, they can be thieves and window smashers and still have valid political motivations. And what they've done is illegal no matter what their motivations.
Perhaps he needs to be able to enter into a contract? Non-disclosure agreement, etc.
I suppose that sounds more logical, but still fails to make any sense. The money is the carrot, the contracts (to not sue or tell everyone about the bugs) would be the stick. They can't use the stick, sure, but they can still give him the carrot. Obviously, you don't NEED a contract to give someone money. That carrot would still encourage the outcome that they'd want, in this situation. By giving him nothing, they're obviously making it a lot more likely he'd blab to everyone what bug he found, and he's probably more likely to sue.
you're a dumbass who donates to make himself feel better
Gee, what a jerk, donating money to make himself feel like a better person rather than buying his way into heaven or avoiding paying taxes. (/s)
Isn't it odd that every other shelter organisation around has far fewer euthanizations and far more adoptions than PETA's shelters do ?
No. PETA is pretty clearly all about "LOOK AT ME! PAY ATTENTION TO ME! HEY YOU! LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!" Maybe a little bit of "holier than thou" mixed in. That they'd take in animals as fast as possible and kill to make more room is only surprising if you make the mistake of thinking they're actually trying to help animals rather than just get attention.
You present a straw man argument. No one was suggesting they can't pass whatever rules they want. The issue is that the rule is stupid.
Most laws people disagree with, it's not a matter of "you can't pass that law," it's a matter of "You SHOULDN'T pass that law." Sometimes the objections do come in the form of "you can't pass it," but that's usually an excuse. The patriot act, for example. My objection to it isn't really that congress is unable to enact it legally. Were the supreme court to knock it down, I'd take that any day, but I really hate it because it's a stupid, dangerous law that does nothing but take away our rights in exchange for imaginary security. Conversely, people who like the idea of prayer in public schools, their minds aren't changed about it being a good idea by someone saying "But that's unconstitutional! You can't do that!"
I'm assuming there's no legal reason why one would need to be 18 to get paid for something like this? No child labor laws that apply in weird ways to where paypal would be classified as a sweatshop for one time giving money to someone who was 17? Just lawyers upholding the all holy all important important EULA at the expense of what's fair and what's good PR?
I don't like google glass of one reason. I hate advertisers why would I want ads transmitted to me just because I walked by a store? Oh that isn't a feature of glass yet? just wait it will come right along with the face recognition.
So you hate it for a feature you're not even sure is a feature?
I'm not going to say it's unreasonable to expect that is going to be a thing, but Jesus, this is news for nerds. Can't we find real reasons to hate something without resorting to inventing features that we WILL hate?
It's not limited to long distance rail here either. Local trains in chicago, NY, Washington DC, and pretty much everywhere else are never on time. In Japan? They're like a few seconds late if there's a typhoon and earthquake simultaneously. The Japanese government is a bureaucratic nightmare, and they obviously have gigantic auto manufacturers lobbying the government as well, so I'm skeptical that government interference and/or car manufacturer sabotage contributes.
I think it really must be that the past few generations of Americans have low expectations for trains and public transit, so they don't demand better service from trains. When the subway is late in Tokyo, everyone is upset and demands improvements. When it's late in New York, everyone is upset but says "Ah, it's always late" and they just shoot someone.
Yes, people go to tumbler. For more than porn? Er... And I think porn ads are already pretty easy to target.
Why is it that every time foreign people do something amazing, someone has to question them about the actions of their governments?
Because that's the only thing they can contribute. They don't understand the science, but they do understand geography.
In this case, I'd say it's more a fault of the articles than the reader: I'm a molecular biologist, and I can't figure out from the summary or the blurby article what's going on.
“Our results show a novel, synthetic designed computing machine that computes iteratively and produces biologically relevant results,” says lead researcher Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Technion Schulich Faculty of Chemistry. “In addition to enhanced computation power, this DNA-based transducer offers multiple benefits, including the ability to read and transform genetic information, miniaturization to the molecular scale, and the aptitude to produce computational results that interact directly with living organisms.”
Honestly, aside from "DNA-based" and "read and transform genetic information," that sounds exactly like the computer I'm currently typing on. There are no concrete examples of how this could be useful in any article I'm coming across. There's no video of this thing in action. It's all buzzwords and promises.
The actual article can be found here behind a paywall. The abstract:
As computing devices, which process data and interconvert information, transducers can encode new information and use their output for subsequent computing, offering high computational power that may be equivalent to a universal Turing machine. We report on an experimental DNA-based molecular transducer that computes iteratively and produces biologically relevant outputs. As a proof of concept, the transducer accomplished division of numbers by 3. The iterative power was demonstrated by a recursive application on an obtained output. This device reads plasmids as input and processes the information according to a predetermined algorithm, which is represented by molecular software. The device writes new information on the plasmid using hardware that comprises DNA-manipulating enzymes. The computation produces dual output: a quotient, represented by newly encoded DNA, and a remainder, represented by E. coli phenotypes. This device algorithmically manipulates genetic codes.
So... in other words they made sequences in ecoli which can be used as a calculator. A very, very, VERY slow calculator. This is not a novel concept people have used DNA for computations before. DNA based computers are probably never going to replace electronic ones, I mean fundamentally, DNA is slower than electricity. Even life finds DNA to be too slow for such calculations, which is why your thoughts are conducted via sodium and potassium gradients. The fact that they don't mention any real uses for this means they couldn't think up a good reason why you'd need to do computations with DNA. "aptitude to produce computational results that interact directly with living organisms" bullshit.
So, I'd say that Israel sounds like the most interesting thing here. I now know that the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel has a PR department that works VERY hard to make their results sound interesting.
I will say that the techniques here could have real uses and could be important, just not at all in the ways that are being discussed. It could lead to a useful lab technique, maybe. But making a living computer? I'd sooner believe that North Korea had invented cold fusion.
No, he works for a company which makes sex simulator videogames. He has a responsibility to make sure the human race keeps breeding.
Relevant saturday morning breakfast cereal.
What? There are plenty of us who don't want zero tolerance. As I said, the schools have taken it and run with it. I'm not a school, if there's any confusion there. That many of the shrill parents and politicians want it isn't the whole story: it's approaching a point where most schools do have some degree of zero tolerance. I've known it was a stupid idea since I was in high school, I've never been an asswipe who demanded it.
Partially, like real roots which sometimes interconnect, but mainly I think the second is individual cowardice, while the first is bureaucratic paranoia.
Either I have found an exception to your test, or Tom Hanks deserves the nobel prize for time travel, not an oscar.
Serious point: that's a bit simplistic. People do threaten to sue the pants off people for saying things about them that are clearly true, and there may be a reason the holders have not sued yet. For example, perhaps the mayor is waiting until gawker actually buys it and shows it, at which point he can sue gawker for a ton of money in damages rather than suing whoever shot the video for all of the thousand dollars in his bank account. If the person with the video has even been identified.
But the reason no one could have faked the moon landing has to do with the state of video technology in 1969. Essentially, the hoaxers claim the video footage was faked by just slowing down people walking in normal Earth gravity. However according to Collins, the camera required to do that didn’t exist at the time.
Similar reasons for this video you say? I... what?
"Unfortunately, what she did falls into our code of conduct," Leah Lauderdale, a spokeswoman for the district, tells Riptide. "It's grounds for immediate expulsion."
...Wilmot's principal acknowledges that the 16-year-old wasn't trying to hurt anyone and simply made a "bad choice," the school's rules said she had to be expelled.
...The spokeswoman says the school district stands by its rules. "We urge our parents to convey to their kids that there are consequences to their actions," she says.
More specifically, Wilmot's mini-explosion -- which came after she mixed "common household chemicals" in a plastic bottle -- violates Section 7.05 of the school's conduct code, Lauderdale says, which mandates expulsion for any "student in possession of a bomb (or) explosive device... while at a school (or) a school-sponsored activity... unless the material or device is being used as part of a legitimate school-related activity or science project conducted under the supervision of an instructor."
source They undoubtedly maintained that since a teacher wasn't present at the time, that violated the letter of the law and, obviously, "NO EXCEPTIONS TO RULES EVER" is the most important message schools can teach to kids. (sarcasm)
There's also obviously a bit of "I'm just following orders, it's not me who is doing this clearly stupid and unethical thing even though I am the actual one expelling you."
I think there are two big roots to the problem. The first is zero tolerance policies. Schools love them deep down because it makes fretful parents think their children are safer, and also probably dealing with kids all day makes you really want to clamp down hard with rules for your own sanity. And obviously in this case, the school was more interested in showing that students are not going to be blown up by science-loving terrorist children than they were in the student. Even if the schools didn't want zero tolerance, all the other idiots involved want them, legislators and parents.
The second is personal liability. No one wants to stand up and say "Fuck that rule, it's a stupid fucking rule" and then potentially lose their job. I have no idea how likely that would have been in this case. Evidently, no one even wanted to say "She DID have permission, so she's not really violating the rules." Maybe the teacher who gave her permission chickened out and said "Well, I didn't give her permission to do THAT, so please don't fire me.
TLDR: it would be nice if someone had the power to use their own judgement and intelligence here, but there are plenty of mechanisms in place to ensure that can't happen. Preventing this type of idiotic heavy-handed action will require bigger changes than one administrator growing a brain and/or balls.
You failed to read the rest of the post. 97% of climate change studies support climate change being a real thing. Gun control, you can't honestly claim that anything approaching 97% of the studies conclude gun control is bad and ineffective. There is a consensus on evolution and climate change, there is none on gun control.
You could elaborate. For instance, what's that about circumcision? The debate behind fracking is settled firmly on the "It's totally harmless" side?
GMO is a good example though, I'll give you that. Aside from making some "no true scotsman" arguments, I can't really counter that.
Did you fail to read the "As opposed to some other issue where there is much more support for either side" line or has that debate suddenly been settled?